


The Caves

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 08:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One summer in Alqualondë, Finrod and Galadriel make a discovery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Caves

They spent the long summers in Alqualondë, with their mother’s family. But one year was different. That was the year that Artanis found the caves.

“Findaráto! Want to come explore them with me?”

The cliffs that ran along the beach were full of them. It was an unusually warm summer, and the caves were deliciously cold after the stifling heat. For every new echoing chamber, they seemed to find an opening into another, and then another. They put on their boots and their old clothes, binding back their hair and leaving their court finery behind. They were explorers now, after all, not simply a prince and a princess. They bound Fëanorian lights to their foreheads, so that their hands would be free, and they would not need fuel or torches. They took enough food to last them the whole day, and would have stayed longer if their mother had not insisted that they were back in time for dinner. But they were self-sufficient, the two of them together. They could set out and discover new dripping rock chambers that no elf had ever seen before, maybe not even the Valar had seen, Artanis speculated. Sometimes they found huge crystals, glinting in the pale light, more beautiful than the gemstones scattered on the beach. More beautiful than anything made by the Noldor. Artanis wanted to map the caves, but her maps kept getting wet, the ink running and the paper curling. Findaráto was content just to run his hand along the cave walls, feeling the cool, damp stone under his fingers. Listening to the sound of water dripping into pools and the splash of their own footsteps, magnified and distorted.

One day, to their delight, they found that one of the caves opened onto a little ledge, halfway up the cliff face. They could sit there, side by side, watching the sea. They would sit there for hours, sharing baskets of fruit they brought from home, taking off their boots and enjoying the feel of the rough limestone against their skin. Sometimes they would watch couples on romantic walks along the shore, and throw cherry stones at them, disappearing in fits of helpless laughter into the cliff face when they looked up in confusion.

The summer came to an end. They returned to Tirion, and to their lessons, and to the life of the court. But neither of them ever quite forgot the caves, and that summer when they had still been children, and for a while, everything had been just perfect.


End file.
